Month: May 2016

The literal translation of the fourth Sun mantra, ॐ भानवे नमः om bhānave namaḥ is “Salutations to Bhānu, the bright splendor of light.” I’ve also seen it translated as “the diffuser of light.” Thinking about this week’s class, I was intrigued by the notion of diffusing, less as an aspect of the Sun — more in the way the mind diffuses light. Specifically that innate light otherwise knows as the inner Self. Which is the light that actually illuminates the mind so we’re even aware we’re thinking, let alone having peak experience enlightening flashes of insight.

When the mind is crystal clear, this inner light diffuses in its bright splendor aspect. When it’s not, the light diffusing through the mind’s lens (or lenses), will be distorted. Sometimes just a bit. Sometimes so much that it’s obliterated in the opacity.

Which brings me to the kleshas, those lovely lenses so brilliantly articulated in the great text of yogic psychology, Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra. If you’re new to this blog and/or unfamiliar with this text, do visit May 15, 2011 in the Archive. For a quick reference, here you go:

The Kleshas

Avidya is the lens that clouds our ability to know our true nature, which according to Yoga is light.

Asmita is the lens that tricks us into buying into that small sense of self that is prone to suffering.

Raga is pleasure, which, when tangled up with avidya and asmita, gets us all caught up in clinging to what makes us feel good.

Dvesha is aversion, which when tangled up with avidya and asmita, creates a profound separation from everything and anything we label as “bad.”

Abinivesha is clinging to life (or any situation) because we fear death (or change).

Needless to say, the mind is a complex instrument, managing any number of receiving, perceiving, discerning, projecting, remembering, associating, etc. functions at the same time. And the kleshas are right in there, wreaking havoc in the process. So this week’s talk explores the relationship between the kleshas and this fourth Sun mantra.

Finally, here are this week’s readings. First two poem from Coleman Bark’s translation of the poetry of Lalleshwari, Naked Song. Although Lalla would not have known the Yoga-Sutra, you can see how in both these poems, she is teaching about the kleshas.

Two From Lalleshwari

1. Wear just enough clothes to keep warm. Eat only enough to stop the hunger-pang.

And as for your mind, let it work to recognize who you are, and the Absolute, and that this body will become food for the forest crows.

2. Enlighten your desires. Meditate on who you are. Quit imagining.

What you want is profoundly expensive, and difficult to find, yet closeby.

Don’t search for it. It is nothing, and a nothing within nothing.

And a Sheikh Nasrudin story and commentary from Swami Muktananda’s, Where Are You Going? A Guide to the Spiritual Journey:

Once Sheikh Nasrudin woke up early in the morning, before it was light. He called his disciplele, Mahmud, and said, “Go outside and see if the sun has risen.” Mahmud went out and came back inside.

“It’s pitch black,” he said. “I cannot see the sun at all.”

At this, Nasrudin became very angry. “You fool,” he shouted. “Haven’t you got the sense to use a flashlight?”

That is exactly what we do. To expect a spiritual technique to reveal the indwelling God is like expecting a flashlight to illumine the Sun. A flashlight cannot shine beside the Sun. Like the Sun, the Self is always shining with its own effulgence. What sadhana can illumine the Self. Only through a subtle and sublime intellect can we know it. We meditate and perform spiritual practices only in order to make the intellect pure enough to reflect the effulgence of the Self.

Baba did teach a great deal from Patanjali and in this quote, although he’s not using technical language, he is very much speaking about spiritual practice as a way to clean and polish the mind (here referred to as intellect) so that nothing hinders, obstructs, distorts, or extinguishes the shining bright splendor of the Self.

The last time I checked in here, it was November and I was settling into my new home. What I’d not yet begun to write about was my discovery and subsequent love affair with the Surya Namaskar mantras. These mantras came to me in April 2015 and after a few weeks of singing them, it was clear they were the centerpiece of our next album in The Mantra Project collection. That album, Mantras of the Sun, released April 22, 2016 and debuted at #2 on iTunes World Music Chart. I’m developing a new blog devoted solely to these mantras and my own contemplations of the Sun. More on that when it goes live. In the meantime, if you’d like to listen or buy it, it’s available wherever music is streamed and/or sold. And if you have any problems finding it online, please visit my website, suzingreen.com.

The Sun mantras are elemental mantras, embodying twelve aspects of the Sun. For me personally, working with them has been an ongoing revelation. Early on in the process, I realized how much I’ve taken this extraordinary star that just happens to be our Sun, for granted. It is after all the source and sustainer of life on Earth, always there even when we don’t see it. The absolute center of our solar system, it’s way more than a metaphor or archetype. It’s a fully embodied form and rather amazing mirror of our own inner light.

For those who visit this blog who don’t attend class or have not been to Mantras of the Sun concerts, I’ll include the mantras at the end of this post.

We’ve now had many classes constellated around these mantras. Over the coming months, as I’m able to blog here, I’ll post more content from this last year of Monday Night Class. Rather than go back to the beginning however, I’m posting material from this week, Monday, May 16, 2016. The contemplation for this class was “Generosity” and the mantra we focused on was:

om sūryāya namaḥ |
Salutations to Sūrya, the self-luminous light

As I wrote above, the topic for class this week was “Generosity.” And if you think about the Sun, I think you’ll agree, among its many aspects, generosity is a key one. The Sun shines down on this entire planet, offering its life giving energy in the forms of light and heat and asking nothing, NOTHING, in return. You want a role model for right living, perhaps I should call it “light living,” make friends with the Sun.

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but still nothing is as shining as it should be for you. Under the sink, for example, is an uproar of mice – it is the season of their many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves and through the walls the squirrels have gnawed their ragged entrances – but it is the season when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow; what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox, the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know that really I am speaking to you whenever I say, as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

The Place I Want to Get Back To
Mary Oliver

is where in the pinewoods in the moments between the darkness and first light two deer came walking down the hill and when they saw me they said to each other, okay, this one is okay, let’s see who she is and why she is sitting on the ground, like that, so quiet, as if asleep, or in a dream, but, anyway, harmless; and so they came on their slender legs and gazed upon me not unlike the way I go out to the dunes and look and look and look into the faces of the flowers; and then one of them leaned forward and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life bring to me that could exceed that brief moment? For twenty years I have gone every day to the same woods, not waiting, exactly, just lingering. Such gifts, bestowed, can’t be repeated. If you want to talk about this come to visit. I live in the house near the corner, which I have named Gratitude.

This post is already so long I’lll end with the mantras and include the Jataka Tale I told on my next post. Here are the mantras.

Welcome to the Monday Night Blog

November 28, 2015

I started teaching Monday Night Class at the Princeton Center for Yoga & Health in 1997. I'd been a student of Siddha Yoga since the 1977 and had recently moved on from that guru-centric tradition. Although the paradigm of guru yoga no longer worked for me, I still found tremendous beauty, power, and wisdom in the yogic path. So I immersed myself in a process of discernment, separating out what I now saw as dogma and magical thinking from what I perceived as essential truth. Monday Night Class was born from that inquiry.

In Monday Night Class' early years I clung to traditional texts and teachings. As I grew stronger in my process, I started taking more risks, allowing my inner vision to guide me. Class grew, year after year, developing, deepening, opening into its essential heart.

The Monday Night Blog began in 2010. We were working our way through Stephen Mitchell's translation of the "Tao Te Ching." Along with this text, I was bringing in sacred poetry, stories, and wisdom teachings from parallel traditions. It made sense to collect all this material in one place and the Monday Night Blog was born. Along the way, we started recording my dharma talks and class chanting, adding an audio dimension.

The demands of my life have forced me to cut way back on regular blogging. Hope springs eternal however, and I hope to return to more regular posting in the new year.

Thanks for visiting. We look forward to seeing you again and again.

Always,
SuzinG,

Monday Night Class Beloved Books in No Particular Order…

This is not an exhaustive list of all source texts I bring to class. Simply a gathering of ones I come back to again and again...

Robert Bly
The Kabir Book: Forty-Four of the Ecstatic Poems
of Kabir. The Seventies Press. 1977; Kabir: Ecstatic Poems. Beacon Press. 2004; The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures. Ecco Press. 1995

Thomas Byrom
The Heart of Awareness: A Translation of the Ashtavakra Gita. Shambhala Dragon Editions. 1990